Relationship between Larry Underwood and Leo Rockway (Joe)

Larry Underwood and Leo Rockway (originally called Joe) meet in violence. On a beach in Wells, Maine, the boy—naked except for underpants, brandishing a butcher knife—charges at Larry with murderous intent. Larry sidesteps the attack, kicks the boy in the midriff, and stomps on his wrist until he drops the knife, which Larry then hurls into the sea. The boy's guardian, Nadine Cross, intervenes, and the three begin traveling together. From this brutal first encounter, a relationship that will reshape both their lives begins to form.

The Guitar and the Transformation

The turning point comes that same night, around a bonfire on the beach. Larry, a former rock musician, unpacks a Gibson twelve-string guitar he has taken from a house they broke into. He begins to play an old blues song, and the boy, who has been watching with hostile, seawater-colored eyes, is transfixed. When Larry finishes, his fingers sore, the boy seizes the guitar and reproduces the tune almost flawlessly, despite never having played before. Larry is stunned. "You're not bearing down hard enough, that's all," he tells the boy. "You have to build up calluses." The boy, who has been clutching the knife as a talisman, now adopts the guitar as his new object of devotion. He sleeps with it, plays it constantly, and his vocabulary begins to return. The music becomes the bridge across which trust travels.

Naming and Identity

For most of the journey, the boy is known only as Joe, a name Nadine gave him because she did not know his real one. He is largely mute, communicating in grunts and hoots, and his past is a blank of trauma. Larry's steady presence—his refusal to be frightened by the boy's savagery, his willingness to share the guitar, his patience—gradually draws the boy out. The critical moment of identity recovery occurs when the party reaches Mother Abagail's house in Hemingford Home, Nebraska. The old woman asks the boy his name. He struggles, then bursts out: "Leo! Leo Rockway, that's me! I'm Leo!" He springs into Mother Abagail's arms, laughing. The name is a reclamation of self, and it is Larry's consistent care that has made this reclamation possible.

The Shift in Allegiance

Leo's attachment to Larry creates a painful rift with Nadine, who had been his sole protector. When Nadine moves in with Harold Lauder, Leo regresses, slipping back into his old silent, hostile state. He refuses to enter Harold's house, telling Larry, "Scared." Larry finds him later, bouncing a Ping-Pong ball, and Leo explains that Harold "smiles a lot. But I think there might be worms inside him, making him smile." Leo's intuitive perception of evil—his ability to sense the dark man's influence in Harold—is a gift that Larry learns to trust. Leo also becomes a conduit for prophetic knowledge, telling Larry in a trance that Nadine and Harold are planning to go west and that Larry must "talk to Frannie." This warning, though not fully understood at the time, proves crucial.

Surrogate Fatherhood and Mutual Healing

Larry's relationship with Leo is not one-sided. In caring for the boy, Larry confronts his own history of abandonment and selfishness. He remembers his mother's accusation that he is "a taker," and the oral hygienist's parting cry: "You ain't no nice guy." Through Leo, Larry learns to give without expectation of return. He teaches Leo to play the guitar, to trust, to speak. In return, Leo's loyalty and love give Larry a sense of purpose he has never had. When Larry leaves for the final walk to Las Vegas, Leo is one of the people he thinks of, and the boy's recovery is a testament to the change in Larry himself. After the nuclear explosion destroys Las Vegas and the dark man, Leo is among the children who chase the Mayday basket in Boulder, fully integrated into the community, his savage past a distant memory. The relationship between Larry Underwood and Leo Rockway is a story of redemption through connection: the feral child who finds a father, and the lost man who finds a son.